


Wires and Stars: Apotheosis

by tatterdemalionAmberite (amberite), titianArchivist



Series: Wires and Stars [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Age Difference, Altered Mental States, Body Horror, Captorcest - Freeform, Codependency, Disability, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Explicit Sexual Content, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Helmsman, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multi, PTSD, Recovery, Revolution, Self-Acceptance, Suicidal Thoughts, ancestorcest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2019-07-23 14:59:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16161257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amberite/pseuds/tatterdemalionAmberite, https://archiveofourown.org/users/titianArchivist/pseuds/titianArchivist
Summary: Your name is Astris Captor, the Psiioniic, once the Helmsman; and for the first time in over a thousand sweeps you are free.You have a patchwork mess of a troll body, and a hive in the new palace; a matesprit who understands you better than you ever thought possible; and centuries of memory that try to swallow you every time you close your eyes.This is better than anything you could have hoped for, andabsolutely terrifying.





	1. as I whisper your new name

**Author's Note:**

> _I dust away the plaster_  
>  _From off your breathing body_  
>  _You're touching your autonomy_  
>  _You'll never be the same_  
>  _And fingers grab at nothing_  
>  _For the first time they are feeling_  
>  _For the first time they are healing_  
>  _As I whisper your new name_  
>  \-- ThouShaltNot, 'Trial By Fire'
> 
> _It gets dark and then_  
>  _I feel certain I am going to rise again_  
>  _If not by faith, then by the sword_  
>  _I'm going to be restored_  
>  \-- The Mountain Goats, 'Hebrews 11:40'
> 
>  
> 
> First chapter content notes: enthusiastically consensual sex on heavy painkillers, unreliable narration, the disquieting things in Astris' mind.

Sollux is holding his breath. 

You're draped along his side like some angular blanket, all elbows and fademarks and your head planet-heavy that keeps rolling halfway off his shoulder with sleep like little drops that slip down the back of your neck and evaporate, close and open, black then gold, veins sap-slow, and the dreams that strung you up waking over the glaring expanse of day are blurry-soft wispy mists of memory now, past midnight on the couch, spilled over onto him, drifting in the dizzy purplish nowhere lapping at the surface of sleep – 

Long purring, long breaths, his hand all laced up in yours held so exactingly still beneath softness, steel under worn cloth. Drawn curtains and ceiling lights and _you don't hurt_ , not anywhere except maybe where a knot of bone digs into your cheek – and Sollux is holding his breath trying to let you sleep and it's so pointlessly, extravagantly sweet that you might burst out laughing for it, amazing pitiable thing.

(Those few hushed, precious times when you would hold him in dream until he drifted away into waking, his face an upturned radiant illusion of peace, frantic clawtip intellect sinking below eyes and lips, sinking away from you –) 

You don't _want_ to sleep, not slip into the dim of your own mind, you want to drowse all gauzy-warm and you want him to ruffle your hair and murmur nothing at all to you, just sounds, little pitying noises. You think you wouldn't even mind the tracing of his thin gentle familiar fingers around that half-healed place at the base of your neck, _strange_ and close-in and neither sweet nor sorrowful, just –

You loll your head tilting on the ridgeline of his shoulder and push your mouth lazily up against his neck, sense-memories of lying heavy-limbed in the drug-laced sopor, when this was the only way you could reach for him – you don't know anything about sun-warmed stone except that maybe there's a cliché about skin and your caste, but you think his neck is molten living movement warm and close under shifting smooth – and _hm_ , and his pulse tastes of salt and dust and sweet-sharp current and you're waterlogged with sleep, permeated with the smell of comfort and sanctuary, purring through your mouth into his skin.

He lets his breath out and the whole world settles gently underneath you with the fall of his chest, punctuated by that little hitch, the silent edge of a laugh or a sob, then relaxing into a purr. Your mind idly chases and maps the waveforms of it, how they twine and separate and curl, like his arm curls around your head, so careful, soft fingertips stroking the tip of your ear – and his voice vibrating through his throat under your lips like you can taste the words, _hi, love, how'd that nap treat you_ , meaningful and meaningless and blurred –

You protest, mumble-quiet and inconsequential and mostly just to keep him talking, "Hmmm – wasn't sleeping –" Shift your hips and shoulders just for the slide of fabric against skin, just for the weight of him resettling against you, and his fingertips are soft light falling on that tiny corner of your body, all else the flat stillness of shadow – "Don't know how to break this to you but – you probably shouldn't look into a career as a recuperacoon, love," and that was inane but you're too fuzzy-tired to actually say anything clever, and recovery has been wrestling your thinkpan back into alignment as much as your legs and hands. 

But for now – you can drape your other arm gingerly around his shoulder without too much trouble, the one that isn't gently pinioned by his holding hand. Your elbow and wrist still twinge seemingly at random, but you're learning to measure your limbs as pieces of yourself moving through the world by their angles against his body, by the choreography of reaching for him; and even when you aren't looking now your hands think they know where his shoulders are.

"And the little whistly snores were just for show, then, you clever woofbeast, I see how it is," he murmurs, gently teasing, his hand rubbing against yours in freeze-frame, numb to startlingly vivid, instant by instant, there and not-there, flashes of sensation, of detail: fingers nestled between yours, then sliding out from between, stroking across your palm.

"I don't _snore_ , I would've heard myself when I was still –" And it's a small, ridiculous thing to go quiet about, and anyway it isn't that you won't talk about your centuries of horror, just that – the lustre of now is many-fingered and draws you in, and you'll let it while you can, you'll let _him_. 

You reach further, curl your arm clumsily around until the side of your hand rests against the back of his neck, and you're still mostly numb there but warmth and pressure make it through, and your forearm feels in patches where the sleeve of your robe has fallen back, scratchy cotton and hemmed-in polar thrum.

You're licking and nuzzling at the thin strip of shoulder you can bare, pushing at the neckline of his shirt with your mouth instead of speaking – you don't want to let go of his fidgety-caressing hand that even dissolving into the hinterland of sleep you held as lodestone, don't want to wake entirely either, to open your consciousness wide enough to let the past or future in, not even the cloth-hung windows of the hive. 

Just this, compassed in the reach of the heat of Sollux's body, purring rich and steady – marveling at the way he soaks through you, sense-memory of orbiting a gentle red star, but at the same time you're only _here_ –

He tips his head back, movement of tendons and muscles under your lips, fingers gripping harder and his breathy " _Oh_ " slipping into your consciousness so bell-clear it's as if it's bypassed your eardrums, and his tongue velvety-moist on your horn, then his mouth, head tilted to suckle and nip softly at the base of the nearest –

And warmth unfurls from the crown of your head in the gentlest, subtlest meanderings through vein and bone, each laving quenching touch, and if you slip into near-meditative focus – you're learning to pay such close attention, your nerves so blunted-dull in places and each touch so shatteringly valuable, each a smear of salve into fractures of feeling, gaps and inversions –

It's like and unlike the way you once exiled pain into corners of your knowing, how if you pull and stretch your perception, you can double his tongue-tips into themselves, resolve twin points from wet enveloping blur and _that_ , that reads _Sollux_ down to your marrow, and your mouth opens into sound against his neck, a stretched-thin yelping gasp, and shoulder muscles clamp into an aching lock as your arm tightens around him –

There's something shy and wondering in the way he regards you, and even without the sight of his face you feel it through every movement of lips and tongue probing down against your scalp, the way his throat flexes against you like he's inhaling the sound you made and the way he answers with voice creeping into his purring, almost a chirp, like he's still so _startled_ – in his stroking fingers down your neck sliding over hair and scars and vertebrae, and you can't find the border between the lightning condensed in his skin and the way your nerves light up in answering cascades of tingling. 

And sometimes shyness ripples echoing between the both of you, and you squeeze his hand and twist your face against his shirt as if you could hide there, shivery all over and the places on your body that feel overintimate and up-close as if it was the surface of your eye being touched have changed now that you're _here_ , migrated and expanded, and even on the swathes of spine that you still can't feel with nerves, surface-bound psionics sense the dappling of fingers – it's just that even in drowsy sleep-circling contentment you're aware of skin that no one else alive has even _seen_ – that it doesn't feel _good_ as much as _right_ and _wanted_.

Fields moving against each other and it isn't that you're shy of wanting his touch, in comfort and in stirring, always, always – you – 

You always thought, a little, an irrational crutch to lean your guilt on among many, that you were so strangely precious to him in some small part as a limited, temporal thing, thought his pity for you amplified in the inevitability of being torn from each other, when you had to form a vision of his plan without running up against the inconceivable, believing that in failure or success he or you must come to an end – so now here in the dream beyond the end of everything every soft wondering sound, every careful touch shakes you out to your scar-ridged fingertips and down to the living, rebuilding core of every bone –

And when Sollux pauses and shucks his shirt _you_ feel more exposed, like the smooth of his skin is your own unnameable thought pulled from secret corners of your thinkpan and played back at you, like his soft warmth and the flutter of his heartbeat against your cheek are messages you wrote to yourself, signals cast forward from time immemorial – but the wordless sounds in your ear and the graze of moist lips now on your smaller horn are messages from _him_ and they mean pity and adoration and the stirring of his still-sheathed bulge against your hip, they center you in the laser-beam focus of his desire.

And you settle back against him purring as if you could shake the world, shake him to his center with it; trace your hand down the length of him in your reach, shoulder to hip, so stretched-weighted languid that your fingers hardly tremble, and right now desire is a sleep-drenched hazy abstraction coiled up in the stirrings of your limbs, dreamy-slow as the careful wet circlings of his tongue, and you're so unreasoningly glad, so relieved always that his softest, most hesitant touches should open you to him as gently here as in your left-behind numinous body, warm through, smiling against his chest, mumbling his name – 

And you think he must have thought of you as you slept, of your body in its weight rested on him – Wonder if he ever let himself think of this before he saved you; you hope – that in his mind you lay scarred and happy in his arms, as if that could mean some part of you has lain here always – 

He names you back, _Astris_ in low tones that you feel as much as hear, lips pressed into your hair, and the pads of his fingers make gentle circles on your cheek. Your hands can't do that yet but they know the memory of it, it's unfurling slowly into your fingers over so many nights, like his almost religious faith in your recovery is creeping into them, into you, the way his knowledge of his own body mirrored into your nerves –

– Your hands remember touches that never happened, the hairtrigger-sensitive skin of your face remembers, and – (his caress to your etched-out hollowed cheek, and blur and _longing_ – When it was as forbidden to you to become something his gentle hands could touch as to become a wingbeast or the interstellar dark, of all hopeless desires _this_ –) 

Still shakily gliding along the surface of dream, as if some fragment of mind is trailing beneath, still immersed in the chill of its own petrified labyrinthine places while your body warms itself stretched languorous around and over him, pressing little light kisses at the perfect peak of his eartip – as if through careless tingling fingers you might wick up time-dark need from the depths of sleep, and _that_ , cavernous, insatiable, millennial, oh you _can't_ – arms laden with impossible beauty, skin transfiguring to gold beneath your sweat-chill stilling palms – 

(Once in the clinging terror of another world you promised to pour yourself into his atmospheric-deep pity, ashamed and enslaved but entire – but the event horizon of his oath looms between you and that place now, so close that even the gift of yourself must be warped by it –)

But you trust him so dearly to want you in your brokenness, the way you trust that your ancient corrupt body becomes beautiful beneath the work of his fingers when you close your eyes, a tapestry of the marks of your liberation, what you become when his hands light on your face, exposed to touch as to noon-light, to microscopic gaze.

As if he could still feel through your mind what it is to – find the sum of your need distilled before you into nectar in the palm of his hand, and sometimes you just run to overwhelmed with knowing, with overlay, with _here_ – and you're whimpering _I love you, I want you, I love you_ clinging into his neck, and the way you tense all over hurts like your limbs being pulled by invisible hands, you're not used to _inescapable_ need, still not – 

– not prepared for the way this all-over contact takes you, quivering toward Sollux like you're trying to reach from beneath your skin, caught in the catch and shudder of his chest breathing _yes_ and _love you_ back – in the press of his whole body so perfectly measured to yours, clasping tighter to you now and the tips of his bulge sliding against your stomach moist and radiating out sudden starburst warmth – and he curves his palm around the angle of your jaw, and his fingers cross your cheek soft and trembling. 

When he draws back, head and shoulders peeling away, it's near-painful disorienting, scraps of self fading to blank for a moment with the loss of contact, but then the way he _looks_ at you – his eyes shining, not just the glow of energy but the glimmering overlay of tears and the need, the longing in his face, like what you see is a vision sketched from what you feel - "Oh god, you're _undoing_ me," Sollux says, and his voice is thick with pity and – "Swear you'll say if I – if it's too much –"

"I'll tell you," you're speaking over him, tripping over words, already almost begging – "You won't hurt me, I wouldn't let you, just –" And you pulse all over responsive to the perfect slickness of his tendrils on your skin, current snapping and twisting to reach for him, lapping at its drugged boundaries – And your own sheath swelling open, wet and soft and your bulge coiling slowly behind and –

The intensity of this still paralyzes you, truly struck still, not quite like your attacks of weakness but almost like fear that if you move, if you let your body remember what it _is_ that you could lose this, and you need the coaxing brush and rub of his fingers so terribly, need –

– the shaky exhale of his breath, again, just " _Oh_ ," like the warm puff of air on your face could make the pity in his voice seep into you physically like rain on seeded soil – "oh, Astris, I love you, I want –" 

And he reaches like you want him to, but doesn't keep moving, just _feels_ , cups his hand around the impossibly sensitive opening, the heel of his hand resting warm and gentle against the softest skin in the whole expanse of your body, cradling the unfolding tips as he leans in and traces along your lips with his tongue, catches the edge of your upper lip in his mouth delicate and tensed with desire.

It seems that you've been soft-boned vulnerable here before him for lifetimes, aeons, strung into longing and barely-kindled renewal and – a secret superstition that lights you up frantic with need for his hands on your skin, that any place in you he fails to reach now will wither in the midst of the tenuous awakening glowing through you, even to his lambent power pouring through the inmost moving valve of your ancient stuttery heart. 

And you manage to move just to pull him closer (like _this_ the creaky-new muscular aching is a wonder, the tingling rake of slow-branching nerve desired because the pain means _soon, more touch, soon_ –) Just to slide your thigh up over his awkward-bent spindly legs, already trembling harsh-breathing with exertion, and your body is awake, your bulge curled out to fill the cavity of his palm, twining against smoothness, but the words are falling whole out of the sleep-limned underside of your consciousness, "Please, my light, my answer and question and –" You've trailed off into code and humming but your voice doesn't describe that wavelength and you hope it slurs into mumbling as you purr shakily into his mouth – "pull me open, fuck me, let me have this –" 

Sollux says _oh_ again like he means something entirely different by it this time, like your easy spill of words has siphoned his away somehow, and strokes your bulge with the pad of his thumb, rubbing between the tendrils, his grip soft and fond and _knowing_ like he can feel the slackening of muscles in you letting go, and his own bulge slides down along your belly, hooks, coils together for a moment before he nudges with his hand, untangles and pushes lower –

Reaches for the flushed-swollen lips of your nook with the back of his hand, strokes a knuckle along the opening, trailing with spilling slickness - just barely grazing between and in, preparing –

And you must still be hazier, farther outside yourself than you thought because the touch comes through as a burst of the most beautiful static, appears behind your eyelids as light as much as in the crux of your body as sensation and you moan so low and sudden that you startle yourself – swimming dual-colored cometary sparks on pillow-soft dark and your bulge lashes wildly against his stomach, pleasure like a blow to the gut, a blooming bruise, just from _anticipating_ and your hand has found a way into his hair where your skin can drink softness, where you can't quite form a fist but can close your fingers onto each other and hold on, you _need_ to hold on, your need for this is a fissure in your mind and fulfillment is vertigo and grounding both, as if the gravity of all Alternia can't hold you unless _he_ does –

And Sollux is breathing soft and shaky and irregular and guiding with his hand, wrapped tight around his own bulge restraining, letting just the lower tip begin to squirm up and in - a gradual slick undulating, and a cry wrenches from his chest, sharp and sweet - he lets his weight sag against you so careful and slow and you _feel_ the way his bulge trembles with the effort of holding back inside you, crowded-tight and hurting and you don't know whether the tears leaking down your face hot and continuous and pooling against your earlobes are from the strange intimate stretched-out pain of taking him in, or the faded stains of memories you can barely name, or the screen-burn incandescence of new ones seeping in from dream to flesh, or just because everything is too _much_. Only that when you blink your eyes open everything is golden, outlined in shimmering blur, that when you try to say _please_ it echoes back to you slurred barely-coherent, but you can just manage to tilt your hips up against him and pull him deeper.

And the stripes of watery pain twinging up your spine as Sollux gasps and his bulgetip wrenches up in you writhing-thin, a fiery-bright point of touch against stretch and burn and you slump over entirely toneless with overwhelmed keening, slide from half-lounged to sprawled flat on the seat cushions drawing him down with you, his sharp weight pressing you in so desperately, wonderfully _known_ , pain that tries to press the truth of this into you but – but you've wandered into some valley beyond belief where nerves cry out in confused unison, you feel that you and he are vaster than worlds, you feel that you are moving, being lifted, carried – (nothing to fear in it, so terrifyingly unafraid, a whirling blank where you never _knew_ how afraid you were –) 

But the twining of his upper tendril with yours is pure pleasure, warmer than tongues and suns and laughter, clasping of tips to tips tangled and dripping and you're grasping with what power you have for him, crazed in need for holding, forgetting that your arms are yours to use or how you might reach – how to hide your tears or if you need to, if you're thinking or speaking or sobbing _please_ and _safe_ and _more_ –

– and your face aches hot and swollen from crying, and even if you could speak coherently you'd still have no _words_ \- for how he moves in you slow as a sleeping heartbeat, for the way he groans heavy and amazed and pity-laden as he tries to keep his legs still and the answering outreaching of energy that blankets your skin, the choppy breathing as he concentrates and the tingling wisps that wind into you around his bulge, dizzyingly gradual, coaxing and opening inside, delirious-vivid – the way his eyelashes flutter against your neck as his bulge twitches in you, reflexive even through his careful slowing, the way he gasps like you're something shockingly impossible and coils tighter around the base of your tendrils and shivers where your power touches him –

Lapped and caressed and soothed with light, light that washes over that cringing instinctual remnant coiled where your thinkpan meets the memory of the body, wears through pain and tensing and you can do nothing but make soft-mouthed sounds and pull up pleasure from its hidden roots in each illuminated place where his body flows up to you – (those places where you border on starfire and the shallow charge-laced seas where life designs itself on planets and the form so like yours vessel for so _much_ –) 

So concentrated-poured into your body that you think you can feel his prints, the mark of his power in the regrowth within your hands when you stroke the ridgeline of his hip where he trembles with stillness, you think you feel the warmth of his breath laced into every touch where he taught you to feel this, to know the twist and rub and the gradual give of the muscles around your nook as pleasure, the tendrils of your bulge coiling back entangled into his, slick needy complexity and you're shaking, trying to curl so much farther up around him than you yet can, enclose him in limbs, shoulders and stomach and knees in futile spasmic quivering –

You're pulled apart and dissolving and all the diffuse pieces of you are _here_ and Sollux, oh, Sollux whispering your name and _mine_ and kissing tears from your face, touch is burning-hot in some phantom layer of your skin and every time you think you've managed to believe in this completely – but you don't have to keep a hold on it, don't have to see and understand, only to _let_ him, to try to breathe out gratitude in some frequency he can hear, and he must because he winds deeper in, gasping, coils in you bordered by the ache and press of your pelvic bones, nestled so perfectly snug between your thighs – rakes tingling light across your grubscars like gentle claws and purrs your name against your throat –

Your name in the voice that first formed its sounds, the voice and hands – (in your own mind you refer to yourself by your name in his voice, softened sibilants, overbright trembling hopeful –) Pulled into alignment, unbreathing with trust, that he _can_ – but the movements of his bulge inside so unlike what you know from dream, too pulled apart, too unyielding, can't shift yourself to make him touch nerves you know should be coiled into the wet quaking stretch – 

But he also knows, still keeps the most secret windings of your body blueprinted in his blood, and when he twists and pushes, then – a tiny bound-tight buried point of sudden, unbearable heat – and you lurch inside, yanked crushing, crumpling, lit up all over like alarm, like fear, staring into light onrushing, every moving cell of you tightens and this moment-before still _hurts_ – 

Crying out strangled relief and – and Sollux always wanted so much – wanted to help you forget – 

Shaking into undifferentiated liquid warmth, and his bulge lunges deeper slipping on fluid and – (some detached monitoring subroutine still hovers severed from its use, watches swathes of your immersed-over crackling thinkpan dim, and trusts, and lets them –) 

And your face is drenched where you must be crying, why would you ever, he has you, it's all right now, he's going to, finally, _finally_ he has you – ( _and you will fall grateful into the gentle humming of his power, arboreal, uprooted_ –) 

And it's savage and fundamental and awful, this thing your body is doing for him after centuries of stillness, terrible in its sweetness, bored into and opened in some bleeding reservoir of pleasure, you'll ruin him in the convulsive clutching of your arms – but you _can't_ , you aren't, this isn't how you – _you always know, doubt coiled into its icy lump in your parched unspeaking throat, always know that you won't ever really – ever have_ – and your wounds twinge hurting where his sweat drips in and stings, but the softness under your spine – _and he will rest his palm on your cheek so pitying and patient, and_ – 

You've longed for him as flame longs for water, you've longed for him as galaxies long for the point of gnawing dark at their centers, you've longed for him as the chill serene hinterland of the universe longs for the eternal expansion of dust and stars and you're screaming grief and longing and confused awe, your face buried in some impossibly soft patch of skin you can't name from behind swollen-closed eyes, can't stop shuddering, unmoored and hullless and reeling and wrapped around the one thing in the teeming desolate cosmos that has ever mattered –

Sweat chills in the air on the edges of your body outside of his warmth and pulse and your breathing comes harsh in your own ears - his bulge thrashes in you as he throws his head back keening and stinging-bright flares roll off his skin and fade, fuzz to calm and exhaustion, you can't move and don't want to, can't speak, as long as you stay immersed in this broken timeless lassitude you can't surface into shame, just _held_ here under the shaky-breathed rocking of his chest for long moments that slip away treacly and untouched.

But he's _calling_ for you, seeking you in soothing ragged whispers, stroking at your tear-wet face and biting down apologies he won't speak but you know his tone, anxiety restrained to knowing patience –

And in the pull of his voice you are drawn spiraling up into light, artificial and eye-searing in the sliver you can manage to open them, even filtering around Sollux and his shoulder and his sheltering hands – and you are blood-wet claws where you clung to his skin, and dull throbbing ache in your nook and up through your spine and the muscles of your core too exhausted to even tremble – and you think you like the prickling and the slickness in the places where your bodies adhere, but his voice slices into you, cracks open your dreamy paralytic torpor and – so sweet and concerned, and you're so – 

Too weak to bring yourself to shake his perfect hands from your face, even if you could manage speech, even if you still thrill faintly with the comforting-sick echoes of – and you're letting out a thready whine that you can barely hear, and you wonder if you'll ever _stop_ crying, new beginnings of tears stinging the papery skin under your eyes, if you will ever run dry of old mocking pain and receptor-swamped uncomprehending closeness and be able to face him clear-eyed and seeing –

He says it aloud this time, "I'm sorry," still touching so gently over the rough lines of your face, like his hands invented softness, and you brace internally for his guilt, ready yourself to protest when voice returns to you that he didn't do you harm, to remind him – but – "I'm sorry everything is too much," hesitant, guessing, still worried, but he's got it right, as close as there are words – and you want to laugh, too, because at the same time it's backwards somehow, Sollux's fingertips clearing lines through tear-tracks are impossible and overwhelming as much or more than sex –

And you're still so _happy_ , underneath it all, an immensity of joy so vast and strange that you hardly see it, like the curvature of a planet or of all space, the universal law that bends you around him invisible until you try to pry yourself back – still can't begin to hold in your mind the magnitude of his understanding, how one so immeasurably kind could still comprehend you to the most distorted reaches of your aching depths, no matter how you cloak over the true enumeration of your darkness.

And though the low modulated nerve-hum of lingering relief is still conflated with starsong and frequencies, with the dissipating radiance of having passed too close to forge and beacon and returning now into the safety of the distant dark, still with every touch he delivers your body back into your own scarred and shaking hands and so soon you'll learn to shut that away, to be here only – 

You don't know how to _be_ so grateful, and as he tries to comfort you the tears only flood in faster, steam-hot and unending until you're dizzy with shallow fluttery breaths, you love him until it whites your mind to gaping incomprehension and leaves your body weeping directionless terrified, swallowing air and salt-water in your gasping, mouthing speech in some ground-together babble of languages, burned to the ground with sobbing –

He's saying your name now over and over, _Astris, Astris_ , trying to anchor you, the edge of panic creeping in, scared you're fading out – he can't see into your thinkpan, doesn't understand that you're more _here_ than you've ever been before, than you've ever imagined how to handle – he's sliding off your legs now and curling up next to you, and he cradles your head in both his arms and leans in mouthing soft soothing fragmented words against your forehead –

And you have to speak, have to tell him that you're all right, you will be, he'll pull you to your feet slowly and no matter how much it hurts, you'll let him – but his mouth moves so gently on that small patch of unmarred skin, tiny wingbeats of breath –

And if you had ever looked into the true face of this need, ever opened your store of secrets to yourself while you were a slave you would have lost what desperately clutched remnant of self you had left, obliterated in crying out for life and warmth and freedom and the shatteringly physical truth of his hands – even now his brilliance breaks you down to heaving spasmic breaths and frantic wisps of power stretching toward him under skin, soaking his chin and neck with tears, nebular shadows closing in around the edges of your vision and laid out sprawling as you have been again and again before futures lush beyond your locked-in mutilated comprehension – panicked airless panting, clouds and obscurity, and over the thundering of your bloodpusher the critical error codes all blur together into a miasma of promised pain, and the shutdown –

– but the pain never comes, not _that_ , just a moment skipped over so cleanly you barely realize, and the strangely quiet aches of tired joints and new-learning muscle – and Sollux is staring at you, still holding your head in his hands but drawn back, wide-eyed, lip dropped slightly open, saying the end of your name on a rising, quavering note –

Yanking you back from wherever it was that you slipped, unremembered in-between for a strange second, and your eyes are still stinging-hot and you wanted – you don't know what you wanted this to be like, except that you're sick of _scaring_ him and you're struggling for speech, breathing calmed but parched with gasping – you've cried yourself down to a husk of torn and crumpled skin, resonant-empty inside, but still you can't – 

"Love, I –" you manage in a stony rasp, but the shapes of the words stick and hurt and you cough once, short and dry, and again tear-bitter and wracking and painful and wresting your head from his hands, curling up around the pangs in your abdomen and limp against the jarring twitches of your lungs –

Sollux pulls you to him, steadies you through the fit, his arm pressing to your back and bearing you up - careful, quietly tense, hidden under calm in a way you think should be incongruous to his nakedness but you don't know what _congruous_ looks like, and he's murmuring, "I trust you, okay, you'll tell me if you need help," half sure and half like he's trying to convince himself - "breathe, take your time, I love you, I _have_ you, it's going to be all right, you can explain _after_ you get your breath - "

And you slump against him again, like when you awoke but threadbare-exhausted in body and mind now, less sleep-tending than worn thin, and you don't regret, _couldn't_ regret his touch, his pried-open triumphal cry shuddering above you – _oh_ , but – but he's right, everything is too much, he could lay a finger on your shoulder and it would be too much, and his words of trust and pity stroke at you real as hands, warm around your horns and beneath the scars of your cheeks, unknotting you until you subside from the worst spasms into weakened gritty coughing again – and you know no other comfort but his, that at once soothes you into grateful banked acquiescence and with some hidden goad presses you into longing to struggle through and _prove_ – choking out words, "I didn't – I'm sorry –"

"Don't be - yeah, you scared me," quiet and slow and calm and he is stroking your horns now, the hand that isn't settled between your shoulder blades firm-fingered and smooth tracing knotty ridges to your scalp, mesmerizing or mesmerized, hushing you with his fingers when you lose your breath again, "Yeah, I want you to tell me what happened, when you can talk, I knew, though, I know, it's overload sometimes –" You remember a half-perigee ago, when waking to his face through sedated fog was enough for you to lose what hold you had, remember that he's seen before - "Just - did I _hurt_ you –" And the sharp anguish of the question breaks through his patience, and he's not asking about pain exactly, not now when all the simple miseries of the body are submersed beneath a gentle haze –

"I told you that I wouldn't let you," you murmur, and your voice drips exhaustion and you know plainly how little your word is good for, but this once you didn't forswear yourself, not really – "It's just that – the last three perigees –" 

And you close your eyes rested against his shoulder, and you still blanch nauseous with the nonsense suspicion that you could claw through some membrane and stumble back into that final agony, still finding, still flinching away from unexpected wounds, different from the known topography of centuries of hurt – and he _knows_ , held you through what he could of suffering that drew his face gaunt and desperate with pain in parallel – you don't have to tell him how much of what you gained together you came so close to losing, can spare him the flow of blood and the crackling of malicious laughter like a shower of tiny incisions, spare him the half-sentient crawling daymares, you hardly even let _yourself_ – 

"So grateful – that you came to me when you did, my light, I can't –" and you're going to choke over with tears again, quivering with trying to purr and trying not to cry and the slow-permeating chill of naked skin even with the heat of the room the way you like it, closer to rustblood-tropical-warm –

He knows, and so you know it's that awful time he's referring to when he says, rough and thready and full of guilt, "There were days I – could have freed you sooner, it was within my capabilities before I could –" Stops and tries again – "I knew there would be - by the time I had that level of control and understanding there would be dozens of opportunities I passed up, and I - _chose_ not to see them, because if I allowed the slightest possibility of acting on instinct I would - and I love you, and I –" Tears slip from his eyes, drip against your skin, even as his fingers still soothe at your horns, he makes such an improbable beacon of calm but it's one of so many improbabilities you've stopped questioning – "I wish I could say –" And this is part of the thing he cannot be sorry for.

Your instinctive reassuring murmur fades into a rasping cough and you _can't_ ; can't stand his guilt when he has his arms around you, can't stand how heavily you weigh on his mind, and no promise, no amount of watching him prove himself equal to your burdens has ever made this any easier – "So much could have gone wrong," you whisper as if you're trying to sneak the words past your own lungs, but still they drag and catch hurting in your throat. In nights before this you've felt so deceptively whole in sex and touch, as if his hands could guide your scraps of skin and sense into their places, soothe you troll-shaped, but now you feel your scars through to the bone, feel dried-leaf thin and fragile and drug-hazed and yet – if you could ever believe he truly needed you when you were a devoured distant shard of yourself, then you can believe he needs you here, where you are both huddled together and doubting. "You won the war, my love. Your patience won you the war – as much as your boldness – but it was still a _war_ , and I'm sorry you had to –" Shifting your head on his shoulder, closing your eyes against tears – "But I'm _here_ –" 

"Yes. Yes, you're here. Thank you," he says, so close to your ear you feel the words as much as hear them, and " _Thank_ you," again, and - _you_ owe _him_ a debt of gratitude, but his voice is so earnest it goes in, what he's trying to convey, that he _knows_ \- that living isn't simple or automatic, and sometimes will isn't steely, sometimes it's pliant and slippery and unstable grasp and the rhythm of breathing - so tired but you're hanging onto him, hanging onto your choice, like they're one and the same.


	2. bodies reassembling down where the worms crawl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That feel when your brain is still more than half starship, your body is not, and your emotions are coming out of hiding after a thousand sweeps of trauma. Being a troll again is hard and no one understands.
> 
>  _When the central port starts to crawl and prickle again worse than ever, you can't keep yourself from whimpering. You don't know_ why _; you've borne so much worse for so many sweeps without outwardly flinching - why is_ this -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: bodily discomfort with remembered body horror, PTSD, medication use, intrusive violent thoughts, quadrant blurring, caretaking, a bit of codependency.
> 
> Chapter title is from 'Hebrews 11:40' by The Mountain Goats.

You know you're still at least a bit out of your head on painkillers because you don't even mind when Sollux has to visit his moirail – he doesn't hide that's where he's going, but you're grateful that he doesn't say it outright either just yet, even though your anxieties about this seem to be stuffed back into parts of your mind that feel more like cotton fuzz than gray matter when you try to reach into them. 

Anyway, you're exhausted from your evening's exercise to the point that your thinkpan shouldn't be doing much of anything at all because you should be asleep, or rather would normally be asleep if you had Sollux to nap all over like the world's least squishy recuperacoon. The kind of recuperacoon that makes cute little squeaky purring noises and does a lovely wispy psionic thing to the place right in the center of your back where there used to be a port and is now a clot of scar tissue that pulls at the skin around it no matter how much you stretch. 

Ugh. You squirm on the couch, your robe slightly damp with sweat and prickling at your skin. Maybe you should get in the actual recuperacoon and get it over with, but then you'd be knocked out for the rest of the night and the idea of waking up tomorrow having missed what's left of tonight is irrationally frightening in some way you shy from analyzing just yet.

You spend the next half hour experimenting with pushing psionics through the suppressives – a hazy light, a fizzling pop, and a blinding but thankfully brief headache are the best you can come up with – and then giving up and rubbing your back against the backrest of the couch through your robe. That feels wonderful, sort of like having your hair washed for the first time in centuries felt nights ago, fingerpads and warm friction in among the scarred attachment points – until you stop, and the tension is worse, like the skin in the middle of your back is stretched too tight on a too-large frame. You aren't entirely sure what else you expected. 

By the time you've tried two or three more times it's a genuine itch, like ghost claws half on and half under skin (you had a daymare once that you regrew wires from the inside, pulled a purple squirming thread from your tongue –) and then it really _is_ like something growing out of your spine, feather-quills or rough bark, insistent and repeated and prickling out from that spot between and below your shoulderblades and you're completely aware that this is one of the more stupid ways you've gotten yourself into trouble so far but right now tearing open a scab with your useless squirming sounds like almost a relief.

You make an effort again with your psionics - you did take the extra dose of suppressants quite a while ago, in preparation for Sollux being away, you're still not sure how to _deal_ with yourself alone and as much as you hate the blunting of your power you would rather not take unnecessary risks, not when you still haven't adjusted to the silence in your head enough to _know_ whether you're in your right mind or not - anyway, it _is_ starting to wear off a little, enough that you can push through just a thread of directed force, but as soon as you do it you realize you've just made things worse, it's too gentle and makes the nerves flare up with a crawling sensation that only seems to spread and radiate out under your skin. 

So much intersects there, or did – you have the map in your head, down to the millimeter still, of where the wires ran, the active and the decaying ones, the signature of each handshake between wire and living nerve, and it's phantom data there under skin, bad inputs that you can't just shove into unused storage space because you don't _have_ that anymore, just the inside of your patched-together skull – if something was going to push out from within your body then it would be here, at the juncture of upper and lower spine, where almost every data point and bit of code flickers past flowing from one extremity of the ship to the other, where you twinged and needled and bled in thin lukewarm dribbles for perigees as _she_ cooed with mock concern and shook droplets of cerebrospinal fluid from her gilded claws and _we shoald replace all the jacks next, just to be shore, we have to try everyfin to make you betta... or maybe we'd get more finformation by pulling them one at a time…_

You halfway clench your fists because you _can_ , because the inevitable twinge of protest from stiff speed-regrown tendons puts you squarely in your body, the shape of it as it is now, still a patchwork mess but your _own_ patchwork mess and Sollux's, curled into pillows and _not_ full of wires no matter what your skin is trying to tell you. But the itch is still there, encroaching into your consciousness, and you're digging your claws into your palm trying to distract yourself. 

It occurs to you that if you're already going to overstrain your hands like this, you might as well try to _accomplish_ something with them. It's a long shot but your dexterity is climbing steadily, this evening's rehab took you further than before, and to hell with it - you can sit up, though the supporting muscles in your lower back still complain, you can lever yourself sideways a little against the backrest so you're not pressed fully against it, and try to reach - how do trolls even _do_ this, elbow joints are so _awkward_ \- but it's like plotting a trajectory, or should be; modeling your arm from shoulder to fingertips in approximations because you don't have precise coordinates, but the equations should still _work_ and it's not as if you'll tunnel through a star and turn everything to a smear of plasma if you fail - 

And you breathe in and you reach and - your shoulder joint _explodes_ , white-hot pain that cuts through the blocking of the painkillers, and you begin to try to lock it back but realize that there's nowhere to _go_ except for veins of memory you don't want to tap, you can but you _won't_ \- and on some stupid primal level you're - disappointed, betrayed, it should have given you warnings, _projected course not within tolerances_ , but you don't _have_ that, that system is down forever - and you wrestle your shaking arm back into what passes for a neutral position, holding your breath through shooting pains and finally slumping back against the back of the couch, and then the itch starts in again. 

It's the last straw. There are already hot tears starting to run down your face, stinging over goggle-scars, and when the central port starts to crawl and prickle again worse than ever, you can't keep yourself from whimpering. You don't know _why_ ; you've borne so much worse for so many sweeps without outwardly flinching - why is _this_ \- you're shaking helplessly, shoulders bowed and aching, humiliated by your own inability to stay calm - 

You know it's Sollux who opens the hiveportal because if it was anyone else you would already have vaporized them. Except that the suppressant is still in your system so you just would have _tried_ – 

Fuck, you just completely missed whatever he said, your whole face feels flooded and you're gasping out of your mouth, hunching down pointlessly behind the back of the couch as if you could sink through the floor and vanish, which honestly doesn't sound all that awful right now. You should be inured to the look on Sollux's face when he sees you hurt; his dismay shouldn't stab at you as if you've personally betrayed him, ice in your bloodpusher to match the searing in your shoulder, and that just draws another wrenching sob from you as you respond to what you imagine he said, something like _what happened_. You manage "Shoulder – don't know –" before you get choked up and cough a couple of times, and _that's_ only going to scare him worse, and you somehow superstitiously thought just seeing him might make your back better but the prickling burn still won't leave you alone –

He's cursing in that deceptively calm voice, flat as a knife and just as single-purpose competent, and reaching for the loose neckline of your robe, peeling it back over your arms, carefully, and his hands are calming even if they aren't _helping_ , even if that slight movement of the arm makes an unpleasant grinding sensation come from the rebuilt joint, the pain is gradually fading - and he puts his fingers on your neck and you want to say _no, that's not the problem_ until you realize he's taking your pulse and remember inanely, belatedly, that he must be trying to make sure your bloodpusher isn't causing your distress - "Okay, where," he's saying, cautiously relieved, "I'm guessing you hurt this one because you winced when I pulled the robe off it -"

"Was... trying to..." That comes out incomprehensibly slurred, and you shake your head and sniffle trying to clear your airway. You still brace for the jolt of nonexistent backup oxygen systems kicking in when you hold your breath to slow your gasping. "My port itched and I panicked," you get it out in one breath, and that sounds even more stupid out loud than it did in your head. A cramping twinge shoots down your arm at your involuntary wince of shame so you grit your fangs and sit absolutely still. But even though you aren't shaking as much you're still panicking, really, frozen up and staring at Sollux through a teary blur. "Can you look and make sure – at my back –" Not that you really think there's anything there but scar tissue and skin if you're rational, and (mostly) you are, but it _crawls_ –

"...oh, _oh_ , got it," he says, and you can barely see the expression on his face but his voice is laden with solicitous pity, and he sits down on the couch then next to you and begins to turn you, careful, assisting with his psionics - and you can do this, it's within your capabilities to roll over or turn and sit where he can see your back but you're still exhausted and it's easier just to let him maneuver your limbs. He pulls your robe down further and then it's too cold where he isn't touching; and he must see you shiver because he grabs a blanket and pulls it over your front; and then his fingers trail down your spine, always such a strange sensation, parts of it excruciatingly sensitive and parts you can barely feel at all except for the vibrations of energy at the surface of his skin - "Here?" 

He's found the one that's giving you trouble, all right, it must be inflamed glaring yellow from your failed attempts to prod at it, or maybe it's just that it's healing slower than the others and a sensible guess. But he's touching too lightly, and his hands soothe your emotions but physically just seem to make the itching jump to the surface and crackle out around the closed-up port like a shock.

You whimper wordlessly, stupidly squeaky and loud enough to hurt your own ears, which isn't going to get you anywhere except for ashamed at your failure of communication but for a moment it's all you can do. Then you try pushing your back into his hands, which just makes everything hurt from your hips to your horns. You're going to need one of those breakthrough pain shots for this, you're sure, and maybe that should feel like a defeat too but you've been far too exhausted since your rescue for that kind of pride. (And anyway it's all right as long as Sollux does it, and holds you after while you drowse; you're so glad that he's back that it isn't even embarrassing, just frantically wonderful, you keep reaching back with the remnant of your psionics to read the signature of his power again and again like inhaling the delicious steam from tea or staring out the window at moonlit trees and rooftops until your vision blurs –) "There, harder, _nhhhhhh_ ," you finally manage, dissolving back into whining.

He says _oh_ so softly you barely hear it and then "I've got you, it's all right," and though you're still learning how to read touch there the outline of his claws is unmistakable, careful but pressing _hard_ and you know he's digging in around a still-delicate healing layer that's somewhere between scar and scab, trying to reach deep without dislodging anything, and it's almost but not enough and then he does that _thing_ you were half dreaming of earlier, like the flare of psionics scours through your nerve endings and cleans the bad data out, bright and perfect and relieving - 

And you still aren't used to fear that _ends_ , don't know what to do with yourself afterward when it all seems petty and small like a sensor that had been set to micron-level focus on panic for the last hour has finally zoomed out. You let out breath long and shaky and squeeze your eyes tight shut to clear tears away, not trusting your hands to do what you tell them if you tried to wipe your face. 

~~~

Nights later, you manage to walk across the floor on your own - and the joy of watching Sollux witness it paralyzes you, and you fall. Something in your nervous system is still struggling to adapt to controlling your muscles, and every so often it just cuts out. 

You decide to stop taking the suppressants after that, and Sollux doesn't argue.

~~~

==> Sollux: tinker.

You're fiddling with the catches on the box Ryakka brought you; the prototype inside should allow you to tighten communications security for the palace, once you test it out on your own network and knock it around a little to work the glitches out. "See? That wasn't so bad," you call out to Astris. You've gotten into the habit of resuming conversations minutes or hours later without preamble; nobody else probably understands you when you do that, but the way his mind works in parallel to yours, it's easy to indulge. "You keep telling me you're uncivilized, but you haven't done anything objectionable around other trolls that I can see - not counting when you were delirious - maybe you're more ready for visitors than you think?"

Astris hobbles across the room from the couch where he'd stayed at a wary remove during the visit to join you at your work table, peering at the device, watching your hands move. From time to time he leans on his psionics to help. Dropping the suppressants a few nights ago was earlier than you would have thought wise, but even without the attacks of cataplexy plaguing him, he's been too lost, too often awakening in a panic grasping for energy that wasn't there, and that outweighed the benefit.

"Depends on your definition of delirium," he says carefully, his tone for testing the waters, as he settles heavily down next to you. "And – you're exaggerating, I still get startled sometimes, but everyone has been understanding about it – but that isn't really the problem anymore. You know that – I would never hurt anyone again, I would – I would go back on suppressants, I would claw my own eyes out before I would harm anyone who wasn't a danger to either me or you – You still believe that?"

You pause in the process of excavating the thing from layers of packing to lay a hand on his arm. "I trust you," you tell him, wary, knowing how he flinches from that sometimes - "I know you won't learn to trust yourself in a night, but -"

And he does flinch, a physical shifting of scarred skin under your hand, known patterns distorting as his muscles tense. "I want to learn, I think, I – used to have access to military personnel files, centuries of them, I know some of the – range of ways that centuries of killing can damage someone, I know that most of the propaganda about our species' innate callousness toward violence is ridiculous at its face – I know the warning signs for highblood rage, I've had to cull entire rogue _ships_ , insane captain, mind controlled crew – I shouldn't be so surprised that knowing doesn't make this any easier."

"They made you do things you would never have chosen on your own," you say, keeping your tone gentle, cautious - "It's not your fault - I know you still feel it, but it's not your fault -"

"I'm – not really hallucinating anymore, not since I came out of the medical sopor, but – my thinkpan still – goes in directions that don't make sense sometimes, and mostly it isn't bad, I reach for a sensor I don't have anymore and shrug it off – But other trolls just trip some switch, and I can never predict when, and I can't _control_ it, by the time I try it's already over –" 

He's shivering now outright, and his other hand fits over yours on his arm as if afraid you'll draw away, fear-cold and twitching – 

"I think – only it's hardly like my own thinking; I have _thoughts_ – Sollux, I see – I _see_ myself turning on people. Like the weapon part of my thinkpan has woken up and is running through old programming – only I _know_ – I know it isn't real, I know I won't really – go into threat response, the heartrate spike, the cold knot of psionics igniting into a spark, the push – but I still _feel_ myself reaching, calibrating distance, finding the spine – I feel every ridge in the vertebra with my power wrapped around it, I hear the fracturing, the moment when they are still alive but in too much pain to scream – and the snap, necks are _loud_ when they give in, like a bone snapping in your own ear – it's too vivid, it's surrounding, there's no way out, I see some innocent medic or one of your friends going limp and collapsing onto our livingblock floor and you're looking at me like – like your whole world just crashed down – and then it's _over_ and there's Ryakka the messenger alive and chattering away and you looking bored and all I can think is – when will the night come when I just _think_ I'm imagining it –"

You open your mouth but at first don't have the words; you're not sure they exist. You've slid toward him on the bench and wrapped your arm around him, and now you just say his name and stroke his shoulder, trying to soothe the devastated helplessness, the vivid horrors - finally manage "You didn't, though, you haven't, maybe if you - remember that, it'll get easier -" 

His shoulders shake almost as if he is about to break into bitter laughter but he just turns away, silent, ashamed, until his hand spasms and drops from yours, and as he speaks becomes somehow both more agitated and more distant – "But I can't – I can't _count_ on my own memory, my memory is _showing_ me this, the – sometimes I – I see the fireball, I see the whole block consumed in flames I've set alight, I've melted the door latches, we're trapped inside – as if some hidden program had activated in my thinkpan and I'd just _snapped_. And nothing I ever read in the files told me what to _do_ , with the terror and guilt and not _knowing_ – all the record-keepers cared about was that the soldier kept fighting or was culled – but – Sollux, are you sure the surgeons got everything implanted in my thinkpan that could have...? What if I'm a time bomb, how can we really know –" Locked-in frozen motionless now as if that line of thought had dragged him under, too consumed with fear to trust himself to move – and you don't know what he's seeing, minds walled off from each other, you can't –

"I'm sure," you say almost at a whisper, and reach up and touch his face - tentative, stilling your fingertips when they reach his cheek, so as not to startle - "Astris, love, listen, I've seen the scans, people saner than either of us and better trained to understand them have seen the scans - there's nothing in your thinkpan like that - I - checked every remaining interface myself, tested for booby traps before they could take most of the hardware out. And I _know_ what her booby traps look like, I had to excavate them before we could disconnect you from the ship, they're gone, there's only your own thinkpan to be afraid of - and I'm sorry, I'm _really_ sorry, because in some ways that's worse -"

He doesn't startle, but you can't be sure he even felt your fingers on his face – can't be sure he even heard you, silent and staring at some point between the table in the wall until he squeezes his eyes closed and flinches his face down and away and – he isn't crying, just breathing soft and shallow, and his pulse thunders under your hand where it rests on his collarbone –

"Hey," you say - a little louder, trying to get through to him, going after him with your other hand, not forceful, just insistent, reaching through his hair to brush against the backs of his horns - "Hey. Astris. You haven't hurt anyone, you're not going to, I'm here, it's all right -" 

He comes back with a shudder, less like when in dream he would be drawn into himself on the ship and struggle back into your hive with you, cringing, not knowing what he had done – more like blinking back into attention from a night-dream, leaning into the touch on his horns in his body's own distracted comfort-seeking, making a soft-growled noise of holding back – "Fuck, I don't have to think about the field, I don't _have_ to, it's my own damn thinkpan and I can _stop_ this –"

You have a hunch what he's talking about, a distant memory of a punishment simulation, though you can't be sure - "She can't ever do that to you again," you remind him, "you lit the pyre under what was left of her - remember -" Trying to guide him, now, through a memory that matches the way he's feeling, vicious and dangerous but under his own control this time - "Stripped to a husk of skin and bones, soaked in volatiles, drained of her blood - and I brought you close so you could set the spark and the whole thing went up white-hot -"

He sparks just at the thought of it, light skittering across the table and dangerously close to the half-wrapped prototype – absorbed in images again, a hand going to your shoulder and squeezing far harder than you would have thought possible at this point. "I would go back and set the place on fire again if it wouldn't burn the whole city down – if that would _do_ anything, you're right, it's all my own thinkpan now – and I know every night I live is like stomping on her ashes, and I _will_ , I'll live until this is all faded memory, but right now I – I _can't_ –" And curled up against your side he finally starts crying, a thin, resisted flow of spark-laced tears.

You soothe at his horns and kiss his forehead, both arms wrapped around him now, rocking gently; the amount of pale in your matespritship has almost stopped being weird to you, even though sometimes you think you must be doing it wrong. "Shhh, it doesn't have to be right now - seeing more visitors can wait, I can wait, it'll get easier." And you extend your own power and wrap him in a fuzz of light, a flexible barrier but one that lets him know it's safe now to let the rage and frustration flare out in arcs of energy and they'll be contained - he's going to end up with a migraine if he keeps clamping down like that, his control just hasn't _adjusted_ to not being in a constant outpouring of power. 

And this has always – for sweeps, since long before you saved him – helped him to relax, even in the darkest times. With light blanketing him, Astris would settle into himself in intervals, slow and reluctant, but now he tenses further, lets out jagged fingers of power but winces when they arc back to his skin – starts protesting, "Don't want to – keep you from –" but then hisses when he tries to lay his head on your shoulder, not painful-sounding but oversensitive, like when his scars were new.

"I've got you, it's cool, you're not going to blow anything up -" You rest a hand on the back of his neck.

Astris gasps, startled not pacified, bracing against you to damp down a flinch; and he's terrible at trying to sound less concerned than he is, hasn't quite got the vocal nuances down yet – "Does – residual guilt always feel like someone bolted your head on too tight, or – should I be worried –" He's still muffling tears against your shirt, a chaotic fizz of light crowding around his horns and flickering on his skin.

"Ugh, I was afraid this was going to happen." You reach for his horns again, get zapped, push closer shielded; press your fingers against the spots on his scalp that always flare up on you when you get the kind of headache that results from damping-down rather than overexertion - "Is this helping or -"

Astris visibly steels himself against pain when you reach, but you've hardly started kneading when he lets out a short sigh and pools against your side, gradually going slack in waves, neck to back to arms. "Yes – a little – please tell me that means this is a migraine starting and not my crazy patched-up thinkpan deciding it's going to reject my skull after all –" And if you crane your neck you can see his face, the conflicted look of not registering the extent of pain until its relief.

You're still oddly touched by these little moments where he - just lets slip that he wants to _live_ , the simple clarity of his newfound fear of dying, though he's still awkward and abashed sometimes when you acknowledge them, and you're grateful that he probably can't see the yellowy film across your eyes. "File under most likely hypothesis, yeah," you murmur, rubbing just behind his temples where the built-up power gets heavy and prickly, a purr starting in your chest now that crisis has given way to more mundane problems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is your regularly scheduled reminder that if you're dealing with this kind of thing on a planet that has a concept of mental health care, getting one or more professionals to help you out with it makes a big difference; also, you're not alone. <3


	3. I'm living in an age whose name I don't know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Astris tries flying outside the hive with Sollux, and also interacting with other trolls. Not all of these things go equally well. 
> 
> ~~~
> 
> _You grip his wrist and pull yourself to standing, shivering as you uncramp your legs, and you know he's right, that you've spent as long as it is wise for you to stay in a place that belongs even in some small part to death, that you are vulnerable even when you don't feel it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Karkat being a tea nerd is absolutely homage to temporaldecay's lovely [Distraitverse](https://archiveofourown.org/series/38968).
> 
> Thanks to alate_feline for insightful input that helped us figure out some of the tangles - and happy birthday!

==Astris: yearn.

You can almost taste the sky sometimes, at the back of your tongue the way mist almost tastes like water, with your head out the window drinking in the night air on the nights when you feel strong enough to let your old echoes wash over you shaken but unharmed, like your healing scars are slowly closing doors into you and you're learning to let the present in without so much of the past leaking through. Sometimes. Often enough to render the effort of looking outward worthwhile – 

You've been able to float across the hive without really trying since the suppressants wore off, and – you think you'd like to see your planet from above, paint in the faded layout in your memory of the shape of a mountain from within atmosphere, as if this place could become more real by the separation of flight –

And this time you've drawn Sollux away from his husktop to the window, with kisses and needling half-insults and generally making yourself a complete unabashed nuisance, and – you aren't sure what you've been waiting for, except that if you lose control of your body then he'll have to catch you, but what else is new.

"So when are you going to take me flying?" you ask, quiet and as teasing-casual as you can modulate your voice to, squeezing your arm around his waist. 

Sollux can't hide his startlement, wide eyes and the way his mouth hangs slightly open with his tongue-tips pressed to the back of his fangs for a moment before he smiles, shyly, and leans in against your arm. "As soon as you ask," he says. "Which is to say, if that was asking, I'm on it. I, uh - I didn't think you'd _want_ -"

...and that expression of wide-open amazement gets to you in a way that's as fundamental as breathing or flight itself, as much now as it ever did in dream, sharp and soothing at once, an aching glimpse of how hard he tries to manage his expectations and the warmth of realization that you've done something to exceed them. "I want –" And some things are still difficult to say, but not this, a foundation you have to build on in lifting yourself free of the hold of death – "To see the world you live in, I want _all_ of life here, not just the parts of living that can be done in small, safe steps –"

Sollux takes your hand and brings it to his lips and smiles, wistful to the point of gravity, like he's instructing you in something solemn and necessary when he says, "It's the world you live in too, now, don't forget..." 

And still clutching your fingers in his, he walks with you, through the hiveportal and out through the corridor that leads to a wide terraced roof that extends out toward the city lights in the distance. It's a warm night, balmy-humid, the day's heat long since faded but the residues of it baked into the flagstones beneath your feet; the moons are out bright and full, and the occasional furred wingbeast flaps haphazardly through the air.

You keep close to Sollux as you emerge, joined hands and bumping shoulders, wrapping psionics around him as you glance up at the sky, doused in moonlight so bright that you blink slowly by instinct to adjust (you keep being amazed at the autonomic responses your body remembers, tiny acts of self-preservation that were just _waiting_ encoded in you all this time –) 

Grasping with light more for a sense of place than to steady yourself, to know where you are always in relation to him – the moons almost drown out the stars but he must know the city from above by landmarks, and you probably won't be doing much more than circling the palace anyway – your thinkpan keeps trying to make up reasons to be afraid but what you are is anticipatory like holding your breath waiting for a gift to be revealed – 

"I'm not… _forgetting_ , really," you say, finally, so delayed after walking in silence that you've half-forgotten how he phrased the question. "It's just hard to _believe_ sometimes –" And you walk to the edge of the roof already half-floating, not sure who is pulling who to peer over the sea of hive-lights. "Oh, which way...?" So many _directions_ , and none of them marked on a flight director or traced out on a star chart –

"The world is yours," he says, chuckling at his own ostentatious tone of voice - "But if you haven't got any grand plans - I could always give you a scenic tour of my old haunts. See 'em with your own eyes and all. We're not that far away."

"Please," you say, and if your hands were fully recovered you're pretty sure you'd be crushing his fingers by now trying to encourage him or yourself but you settle for kissing his cheek. You haven't hidden that you've wanted to see the places from his memories, wanted something like a pilgrimage through the mundane things that you drank in through his eyes for so long starving for scraps of normalcy, even hoped that laying your hands on that world outside the safety of the palace might burn away some lingering fog of disconnection and uncertainty – and you're already pushing off from the ground your feet are no longer touching, floating until your chin is level with his horns and grasping his hand in both of yours now, pulling gently as if you're just lighter than air – "Does this count as a first date?" you're teasing, covering over emotion, looking down at him suffused with cast-off light from you –

Sollux just cracks up, at that, hanging onto your hands and following you up swift and frenetic as he laughs himself breathless and rides level for a moment, then tugs you up higher.

"God, I have no idea what they've done with my old hivestem - well, it hasn't been that long, really, anyway," he says, and one sweep ago must feel to him, too, like another epoch of the world. "It's not going to be - exactly like you remember it, mainly because we moved all my important stuff out..." And you're both in the air now, a body's length up from the stones of the roof and drifting toward the edge, the lights sprawling out from the palace gates into the distance below, and Sollux says "Due east-southeast -" 

You resist the temptation to reach out beyond your contact with him and the ground and orient yourself; you keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for this to feel anything like navigating the stars, but – nothing, just floating, carrying nothing but yourself, in the way that throwing a pebble requires a different motion entirely from setting a planet into orbit. 

You aren't sure any longer what in the dreamspace was him coaxing you into practicing for life unable to tell you what he was doing and what was just you reaching blindly out for more, but you're grateful for every moment you spent airborne in a body congruent to this one, even in the close confines of his dream-mirrored hive, that trained you to steady yourself against gravity and lift with light starting to drift out over the city, slow at first, a stroll's pace, careful with the angles of your body not to strain yourself, and as the hive-lights beneath you fall away all Alternia seems to expand around you – and this is what you wanted, the proportions of everything that you so easily forget surrounded by hive-walls, to be reminded that you are hardly a grain of glow now against the backdrop even of a single planet, unnoticed, unwatched, your own.

It's hard to hear over the air that passes you by as you pass it, and this, too, is new and fascinatingly different - it was rare, as a starship, that you'd ever encounter wind resistance, and even then, troll bodies are so much less _aerodynamic_. The air buffets your limbs and pushes them around as you pick up speed, knocks your feet together erratically. Sollux holds tight to your hand as you both settle into riding the air on your bellies - he has a net of power under you shoring up your own, just in case you lose control, and the lights ride low beneath you and the peaks of buildings stand out sharp below you, and the jagged line of mountains hangs silhouetted in the distance, like the world is carried on a torn scrap of paper and that is its edge -

You're absorbed in flying, too cautious to bank and wheel around Sollux and let go of his hand but that's all right, the two of you a single silhouette lined in light, too far from the ground to tell if trolls are peering up at you as you pass but knowing this to be almost as new for Sollux as for you, soaring in the open and not _safe_ , never quite that, but no longer bound to creeping on the ground in concealment of his gift and yours – 

Until you descend and pass between the high crowns of buildings in streets so strange-familiar that your breath catches as if you expect at any moment to glimpse a younger Sollux trudging anxious and weary beneath you –

And then hovering in place as he stops to gaze on an achingly familiar roof for a moment, eyes searching habitually, before swooping and circling lower. You feel the nudge of equilibriating force swinging his face near to yours before he speaks, near-shouting so his voice won't be left behind with the moving air. "That's - well, it was - my hivestem," and he guides you closer to the building, still keeping some distance, floating meters from the mosaic of windows - 

You recognize the angle of turning to swoop around this place like your own distant but well-worn habit from uncountable nights of circling lost in thought or seething with energy or waiting for a faint and distant signal – and so by that shared memory you come to a darkened window and stop, peering into the gloom at a space that shows no signs of having been touched for perigees.

"So are we going to just hang out staring at the silhouette of an empty mainframe rack or are we going to do some recreational trespassing?" you ask, too loudly in the relative calm of hovering so near the ground.

"...Maybe some other night, when your legs are a little steadier?" And you're aware that in part he's still… still _rationing_ , still holding back fragments for later, but Sollux adds, "Most of the things I cared about came with me to the palace, it's going to be a dusty mess in there - and there's somewhere else I want to take you, too."

"Lead the way," you shout back, hoarse with gulping down night air, and you keep grasping at sense-memories like trying to catch updrafts of wind, dim fragments of familiarity. You know empirically that you've done this thousands of times before but you still feel fledgling and wobbly within your old shell.

Just _when_ you begin to recognize the route, you don't know, only that the familiarity is more recent and carries a dim, subconscious feeling of unease before you realize where you remember it from. You start to say something – you aren't sure what, a reassuring noise, some word of recognition – but it seems better to be silent, fingers entwined with Sollux's and half-numb with cold, watching the landscape beneath you eerie with the lack of the overlay of his mind, as if the world has lost a dimension of texture that was made of his emotions.

It takes slowing in flight before you can speak to each other easily, gliding on a warm wind toward the crumble of ruins dressed in weeds now and moss, oddly peaceful. Not oddly to Sollux, you realize, as he leads you out of the air, sailing down like dandelion seeds on a parachute of light. He's visited here many times.

"We used this as one of our informal bases to plan the coup," Sollux says. "It's far enough out that it was easy to avoid being watched." He sits down on a piece of foundation. "AA doesn't speak to me often anymore," he says, with a kind of melancholy equanimity. "She's sort of... drifted further away. And it's not like she _can't_ reach me from somewhere else. But I still..." He gestures around himself, and seems to run out of words.

And for a moment you're also at a loss, hardly even able to find balance on your own wobbly legs, psionics reaching to the ground as crutches while you get your feet under you and you aren't sure – but almost as soon as you think it then you know that nothing has changed, of what is allowed or required of you, no gulf except in time between pulling him to you and being brought here by him, and you settle by him carefully, wincing at the cracking of your joints that breaks the stillness, and gather him into your arms silent and as steady as you can be – you can't even imagine being as young as he was then, when broken shards of his devastation pressed at the boundary between your minds and even barely comprehending anything of him beyond his wounds and doom you pitied him – 

But his breathing is soft and even, and he rests against the frame of your chest gently, upright, and gives a tiny shrug. "It's… well, it's not _all right_. Of course it's not. But it is what it is," Sollux says, his eyes downcast, and sighs; and you know he means _it's no longer raw_ \- you know well, from when you could see into his mind, the way he grew around the wreckage, whole or otherwise, adjusting, and even if no one has drilled holes in him physically he _understands_ things he shouldn't - things no one should have to comprehend, and that you desperately, selfishly need someone to; and if that pity is less immediate, less coring-sharp than it was, then the roots dip deeper from sweeps of watching him _become_. "I thought she might… want to say hello to you, or something. But I'm not sure she's _here_ very much any more, either, ever since we won." 

"Hi Aradia," you say, closing your eyes, and – you've thought about how it might have been if everything had gone wrong, her echo bearing echoes of you to Sollux across the numinous barrier that is somehow permeable to her, the way you pushed through laws of distance and velocity until – 

At times late at day when you felt perversely like crying you've wondered if something like your voice would have come to him mediated by dispassionate red on his husktop screen and what you could possibly have _said_ , if you had gotten what you thought you wanted – even convinced as you are now that you chose right, are speaking from the side of that divide where you have to be. 

"Thank you," you murmur, and that has nothing to do with crossings and death, just that there were sweeps before you broke through to him, sweeps when he was somehow unimaginably younger than when you first knew him and when even if you had reached him your fears of crushing him in the contact would certainly have been realized – and you know they shepherded each other through, that part of what he is that you lack is not only growth where slavery stunted you but the gift of the kind-eyed girl from his earliest memories.

She doesn't answer, and at first Sollux tenses, leaning infinitesimally forward, waiting despite himself; then as minutes pass he leans against you and holds tighter, as if shrinking back from the hungry dark. "Thank you," he says in a long-delayed almost inaudible echo of you, but not _to_ you; and then, "Let's go now," and gathering himself, he offers his arm to help you up from the tilted slab of stone.

You grip his wrist and pull yourself to standing, shivering as you uncramp your legs, and you know he's right, that you've spent as long as it is wise for you to stay in a place that belongs even in some small part to death, that you are vulnerable even when you don't feel it – but still you're grateful, in the boundlessly immense way that drives you to cling to Sollux even once you steady on your feet, to cloak light more tightly around and between you as you gradually lift from the overgrown earth; in tiny selfish ways, that he thought you strong enough to come here, for the isolate quiet of this place that lets you wrap yourselves each in your own thoughts as you rise and turn back toward the city.

Forests to scattered lawnrings to the first ramshackle hivestems rising in copses more like planted and grown than built things, and there's some dim satisfaction in it, that the Alternia you were conscripted at hatching to build is razed to the ground now by the decay of time and the handwork of children and drones and lusii, everything temporary almost to the point of whimsy, no trace of the monumental constructions of your enslaved kind. 

Even your home – from the air the foundations draw out a glyph in a forgotten ancient geometry, but the troll-scale structures that rush toward you are entirely new, every part of this place that is more hive than fortification a testament to the hope that brought you here. You set down in the courtyard, and here at the end of flight are blankets and soup, and curtains to safely watch the sunrise through, and sopor, and real sleep.

~~~

Nights go by between those hive walls. Sollux comes and goes more often while you occupy yourself finding and determinedly exercising every muscle that you didn't know you had until it became sore just from wind resistance and unaccustomed freedom of motion while flying.

You're still learning _calendars_ in this space - something like and entirely unlike the rigid forced-in shipboard schedule; so everything is still startling when it happens, even if you knew it _would_ happen. It takes long minutes of watching Sollux prepare to remember why he's combing his hair (it doesn't stop standing up, but it does so in a more regimented fashion) and changing his usual shirt for….

"...Isn't that the game you told me promised a massive virtual reality simulation and ended up being a broken disaster? Why is the logo in the shape of a pail?..." Then your mind re-synchronizes suddenly, and you wobble from surprise and catch yourself on the back of a chair. "Right, your date with Karkat." 

Sollux looks at you with large-eyed worry, like he thinks he might have done something wrong. "Sorry, I thought I'd told you…"

"No, don't, I'm just -" You make a hand gesture at your temple. "You would think I would comprehend the passage of time by now, but apparently that gets worse with practice."

He cranes his neck to look at you while tying his shoes. "You're really going to be all right while I'm out?" 

"Well, I won't try anything outrageous like _that_ sorcery." You glare mock-suspiciously at Sollux's clever hands assembling his shoelaces into knots as if you're watching the laws of entropy casually reverse themselves in your living block. "Go on, I'll see you soon."

 

~~~

It isn't really morning yet, not nearly late enough to worry that Sollux isn't home – and even if you _were_ worried you could message Sollux on Trollian like a normal troll instead of fretting that you can't eavesdrop on his thoughts – and anyway he's only been gone an hour and change, it just _feels_ half a night you've been here, practicing focusing your eyes to read, making a simple snack, doing one more round of your hand exercises than you're quite supposed to –

You're proud of that last thing, looking forward to telling Sollux and his glowing-eyed pride and halfhearted complaints, so even hearing a second set of footsteps behind Sollux's approaching the hiveportal it isn't quite enough to quash your good mood.

"... I actually _do_ want to try making you tea and enjoying your exasperated faces when I inevitably do it wrong, but I'm not sure - well, Astris is -"

"...still learning how to not be a starship?" Karkat guesses. 

"Basically, yeah. He doesn't usually want other trolls around yet - especially without warning -"

You sigh and push yourself upright. Sollux is trying not to sound sad and mostly succeeding, but – well, you _do_ want tea, and Karkat is the troll whose lost-looking grey-then-red eyes you've gotten to know from treasured fragments of Sollux's furtively shared memories, from a drug-warped blurry moment before you emerged from the medical sopor, even, in some sense, from your own hoarded and encoded recollections of a mythic past. Something about his voice reminds you of a time when you thought fairness was something that mattered, and it really isn't fair that you know all this and have barely said two words that you don't even remember to him. That voice is saying, as you reach for the latch, "Well, I can't say I'd blame -"

"I consider myself warned," you say, more wearily than you expected to your own ears, opening the hiveportal with only minimal assistance from your tired hands. "Did someone say tea?"

They both startle as it swings open in front of them. Karkat makes a clipped yelp and his eyebrows climb, and Sollux blinks at you, eyes radiating light behind glasses - his unguarded fangy grin makes you glad you opened the door even if you don't know that you can justify the surprise and pleasure and pride in his face. "Oh!" Sollux says, and, "Astris, KK - you've - I don't know exactly how much you remember -" 

You attempt to do a confused-looking thing with the scraggly scar-crossed wisps that should hopefully regrow into eyebrows eventually. You aren't sure how much there _is_ to remember, although you suspect having Karkat around your hive will help you find out. "I'm sorry for scaring you," you blurt out, thick-lisped from words stacking on top of each other. "Aside from opening hiveportals on unsuspecting trolls I'm mostly all right tonight –" You open the door further and gesture vaguely at the nutrition block.

They both follow in. Sollux gives you a pitying look and reaches for your hand, tender from overwork where his fingers catch at it but his touch still feels good. 

Karkat snorts in a way that comes off as more embarrassed than amused as he saunters ahead. "Not your fault I'm - how did Sollux put it - 'a high-strung bitch who hits the ceiling when my palmtop dings'."

You remember in a flash then that he lost a moirail - the knowledge somehow _close_ , like you've spoken of it before. And that it was not much longer ago than the sight of thick fuchsia-black blood running down the Heiress' chin, that fixed point in the chaos of time, so vivid it could have been _now_ except that everything after it is so unmistakably _after_. 

Sollux tugs your hand, because you've stopped in place, and he's already lifting up the teakettle, guiding it from a distance to fill it at the water spout. 

"You too, huh?" You make an attempt to elbow your matesprit in the ribs that's only feeble because your elbow doesn't show much interest in bending beyond a 90 degree angle yet. "Whoever coded that noise didn't have –" You make another vague gesture encompassing the three of you, your living block painstakingly dropped with soft warm-toned surfaces – "In mind."

"No shit," Karkat says. Sollux interjects, "You know you can replace it if you just -" as Karkat is already answering, "I think the logic is that I theoretically _want_ to be braced for whatever is about to come out of the infernal thing -" Then he looks at you with sympathetic eyes, glimmering red in the soft light. _Surprisingly sympathetic_ , you think, but at the same time you don't _feel_ surprised. "But it's not like a job consisting of yelling at highbloods is the _generic_ case."

"Someone has to do it –" An answering excess of sympathy shows through in your voice, you think, even raspy and not quite healed as it is, a weight of resignation that can't possibly be about the role of the Discordictator. 

You remember _responding_ to Karkat's loss, perhaps in a dream. You remember his ancestor wandering through your daymares and fever-dreams at times, mostly with the flat listless countenance that you'd have thought ghostly if you'd had the association in reach. Trying to piece together a concrete concept of _what interaction actually happened_ is confusing and more than a little embarrassing. 

"Right... tea. Don't we have that blend with mint?" You start toward the nutrition block again, tugging Sollux the way he'd been going when you stopped him –

Sollux has already got the teakettle powered up and bubbling away. There's something not-quite-right about how fast it heats, missing the lacuna of slow simmering. "Yeah, there's that and there's the stimulant version and if anyone doesn't like those we can alchemize something -" 

Karkat makes a face at the concept of alchemized tea. "I'll take the mint," he says dryly. "Since I doubt this thing will get the water exactly right anyway it's not like I'll miss the good stuff."

"It _doesn't_ get it exactly right, does it –" You stop in your tracks again, poleaxed out of proportion with the pettiness of the revelation – "I thought I was misremembering," you explain, and most things of the tastes and textures of the world, disrupted by scars and dimmed by drugs as they are, have been wonderful far beyond the extent of any dim and distant memory, but there _has_ been something bitter and scalded beneath the smile-tasting warmth of tea – "I mean, for all I remember we made tea in holes in rocks back then, heh –" You cover badly, and you've become less ashamed of your surges of emotion about everynight things around just Sollux, but –

Karkat peers at you sharply and you almost apologize but he leans in just closely enough that you can tell the look is keenly curious. "Well, I can't say _that's_ what I've been doing, but a stovetop kettle does a better job of getting the water just below boiling, and with some of the old designs you can tell when it's right by the noise it makes -"

You can feel Sollux making a gobsmacked face without having to look at him – you can hear his voice in your head without having to _hear_ it, _oh no, my matesprit and my kismesis are bonding over culinary history, I'll never have a moment's peace_ , all the grumpy self-conscious wonder that Karkat doesn't have any reason to feel toward you, something refreshing about that lack of expectation – 

– and you've abruptly run out of energy for standing up. You give up on making it to the kitchen and wobble over toward the couch. "It'll give me an excuse to practice using troll eBay," you say weakly. You could _really_ use that tea.

You feel Sollux's worried stare on you from meters away, glimpse out of the corner of your eye as he starts toward you, realizes he's still juggling tea things, and hovers at the edge of the nutrition block. "Look, I know I promised to attempt tea, but if -" 

"Don't worry about me," you say, "I swear I've managed _sitting on the couch_ at least five times tonight -" It comes out a little more sarcastic than you meant it to, and also more breathless, and having thus jinxed yourself, of course, _then_ you stumble - 

A halfhearted fizzle of psionics helps to reinforce the knee that just went weak but doesn't stop the momentum that has the rest of you close to toppling sideways; at least you're falling _toward_ the couch – when Karkat puts out his arm, and you only have a split second to flinch further away mid-fall before he stops, giving you one of those distantly-remembered looks that says _I've got this_ and _I have no idea what's going on_ at the same time, his forearm crooked at a respectful but reachable distance. You take it – less awkwardly than you feared, you really did _almost_ catch yourself – and you both sit on the couch with a heavy _whumpf_.

You take your hand gingerly off Karkat's arm, half expecting to see burn marks or claw gashes on his sweater where you peel your fingers away, but there's nothing but soft, rumpled fabric – you shake your hand a little and grimace; that was probably an insulting gesture. "I'm sorry, I'm not –" You aren't sure what or how much you're trying to say, and your embarrassed expression deepens until it hurts the corners of your mouth.

Karkat rests his palms on his knees and slumps slightly, looking... oddly more relaxed than insulted. "It's all right, me neither," he says to the carpet or his shoes.

From the nutrition block, Sollux snorts in a way that you've come to know is hiding concern. "On second thought, I'm glad I'm making tea, I think you _both_ need it." Cups clink in his hand. 

"Who needs mutant parallel brains when you've got Troll Sherlock here," you grumble before you remember, for about the 22nd time since Karkat arrived, to be self-conscious.

"I have those exasperated faces ready whenever you are," Karkat yells into the kitchen, then glances at you conspiratorially – you have a feeling that it's both of you forgetting again that you're supposed to be on edge.

"Two cups of justified disappointment at my poor life choices, coming up," Sollux announces, deposits a cup of tea in front of each of you – yours steaming slightly less, he's poured some tepid water in it to not burn you – and settles on an armchair close by.

"Hey, where's your – of course you didn't make yourself tea, because neither of us can remember basic life necessities without an instruction manual and we're both going to die of dehydration surrounded by every beverage known to trollkind. Here –" You extend your cup toward Sollux, but drops are already starting down the side from your hand shaking to start with, and then you cough dryly, winded from the pale tirade that you're just realizing came out of your mouth right in front of Karkat, and tea sloshes everywhere.

Karkat catches at your arm again, steadying, automatic, as if he's trying to intercept the questing in your voice, and blurts, "As hypocritical as it sounds, don't panic, I - sorry, that's -" 

It helps, somehow, and you manage to set the leaf water down on the hydration plateau before he takes his hand away, gingerly, and your fingers never burned his arm but it's as if maybe your arm burned his fingers, and you remember again that he's not ready to be this to someone - and you have your doubts that anyone can actually moirail _you_ , but even if your wretched snarl of light and warped steel could be untangled - what could you ever give back to someone without their own true palemate outside of you -

You don't want to outright reject something that Sollux made for you so you pick up the tea again and take a swallow of it but your hand keeps trembling and you have to use psionics to steady the cup; all the eyes on you are too much, two trolls with only the best intentions toward you and you can't - you set the cup back on the plateau in front of Sollux and painstakingly pull yourself to standing. 

"You have so much -" You meet Karkat's eyes, your voice slow and tremulous and as acutely gentle as you can manage, trying to reach _him_ and not the memories that frame everything - "So much to look after that's genuinely _important_ , and I won't - it would be… dishonorable, if something like me were to divert you from that." Your eyes blur over then; you blink and avert your gaze as you carefully shuffle away.

**Author's Note:**

>  _"But, as_ epoptæ _, by the synthesis of this Past and Future in a living nature, we obtain a higher, an ideal Present, comprehending within itself all that can be real for us within us or without. This is the second initiation, in which is unveiled to us the Present as a new birth from our own life.”_
> 
> (Quoted in the introduction by Andrew Wilder to Thomas Taylor’s The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries: A Dissertation. Original source unknown.)


End file.
